TerraUSD (UST) is rapidly becoming one of the most in demand stablecoins in the crypto industry with its market cap soaring to flip Binance USD.
![](https://todayincrypto.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/img_625dc6f48d7da.jpg)
Terra USD (UST), the Terra blockchain’s algorithmic stablecoin, has surpassed Binance USD (BUSD) to become the industry’s third-largest stablecoin, with a market cap of over $17 billion.
UST’s entire market capitalization has increased by 15% in the last 30 days, to $17.5 billion at the time of writing, according to CoinGecko. The figure now positions UST as the third-largest stablecoin after flipping BUSD with a slightly lower market cap of $17.46 billion.
The data also shows that UST has been on a parabolic rise since mid-November, with a 525 percent increase in market cap since then.
![](https://todayincrypto.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/img_625dc6f52ee7d.png)
Stablecoins maintain the same value for cryptocurrency investors, traders, and exchanges by keeping the value pegged, providing a level of stability in a volatile market, and the market cap has risen to over $150 billion from $20 billion a year ago.
UST is a stablecoin tied to the US dollar that was released in September 2020. Its minting technique necessitates the burning of a reserve asset, such as Terra (LUNA), in order to mint an equivalent quantity of UST.
The asset is now only following industry titans Tether (USDT) at $82.8 billion and USD Coin (USDC) at $50 billion, despite the fact that the difference is fairly large at this point.
Terra has been making headlines recently as a result of LUNA Foundation Guard’s (LFG) plan to back the network’s stable coin reserves with a massive $10 billion in Bitcoin (BTC).
They’ve already started deploying their cash and have spent around $1.7 billion since beginning to buy in late January. Terra now owns 42,530 bitcoin, valued at $1.722 billion at the time of writing — only 700 tokens fewer than Tesla’s corporate treasury allocation.
So far, the purchases have been costly. Terra’s holdings have gone from about $200 million in profit to nearly $100 million in the red, due to the recent Bitcoin price drop. The bullish buy-ins, like the rest of the crypto market, aren’t doing much to push the price of LUNA up.